I never bought any of the vendor gear. By the time I realized I could, I had already discovered that greens were by and large superior to whites, so I rolled with those and whatever mismatched set of grays and whites I had at the time.

Really, it matters so very little at that level unless you're buying a weapon. That may be a worthwhile investment.

No, you replaced white gear just as you do now, but gear did come slower. You'd usually be in full greens by level 20 or so, although some pieces might be suboptimally itemised. Blues were rarer, although part of that was because it was so dang inconvenient to get a dungeon group together that people often skipped them, especially at lower levels.

Also unless you were really lucky, you didn't get shoulders until 20+ (and often you just wore white ones), and rings, necks, hats until around level 30-40 though, and trinkets were more like 45-60. I think the first trinket I ever saw was the quest reward from Mauradon, and I didn't see another until almost the level cap. The first neck I ever saw was the one from SM Cathedral. My rogue wore a tank ring for almost twenty levels because it was the only ring I'd found (plus it was blue!!). I started raiding wearing the trinket from Araj (a very shitty damage absorption bubble) and the AV trinket (frost reduction and +dodge) because I'd had shitty luck in UBRS trying to get the sweet crit one.

Early on, I remember using white gear. Especially my first shoulders and helmet. I never bought any, because gold was harder to get and it wasn't worth it. I was mainly focused on exploring the world and I just noobed my way to 60. I do remember my first purple item, the Green Tower. Such a magnificent shield.

Well seeing as lvling was harder in general you did everything to simplify the process. Rogues only could equip one dagger and couldnt DW for a few lvls. Having a green meant hogger died or you got pwned. War before lvl 40 was kinda rough if you missed a couple times..

Later in raids...White gear was great for Shazzrah in MC as a rogue!!!

Oh, man, I completely forgot that. Rogues got dual wield at level 20. Man, how did we cope, especially with leveling taking so much longer?

And [fury] warriors didn't get dual wield until level 30!

Enhance shaman couldn't use 2h until they got the talent, which was second tier talents so that also would have been around level 20. Of course, they didn't get dual wield at all.

To even learn a weapon type we had to visit the weapon master in a specific city. To make it even more epic having a 1/150 weapon skill to now have to lvl made life so much better...

If you were in a decent guild you could get away with equpiping unleveled weapons for mc trash or you were stuck in blasted lands spamming insta-strikes on undying mobs. Was a great day when one would get kited to SW. 299/300 took a few hours...

My first toon was a tauren warrior. Not only i bought white gear, but i bought it every time i could. I was decked in white vendor crap, weapon included. I'd pick whites over greens. That toon didn't live much... couldn't kill a single mob 1-2 levels below me without popping War Stomp.

I remember a Snapjaw dropping a Headband of the Eagle (or something like that... 6 spirit, 6 stamina, 77 armor, for level 35) for my hunter.
I felt so DAMN powerful having a piece of gear in every slot.

To even learn a weapon type we had to visit the weapon master in a specific city. To make it even more epic having a 1/150 weapon skill to now have to lvl made life so much better...

I do remember that, but dagger skill was one of the ones that rogues started with. Daggers and swords I think. We didn't have to go to trainer except for maces, I think. Maybe Unarmed, too, and maybe axes later - was axes added before or after weapon skill was removed?

I was very diligent about leveling up all my weapons skills (also Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? Unarmed too). I'd go out and autoattack mobs for an hour just to make sure all my weapons got caught up every time I dinged.

I do remember that, but dagger skill was one of the ones that rogues started with. Daggers and swords I think. We didn't have to go to trainer except for maces, I think. Maybe Unarmed, too, and maybe axes later - was axes added before or after weapon skill was removed?

Axes were added to rogues in Wrath, so it was around for one expansion before weapon skills were removed. I'm pretty sure unarmed was baseline for everyone though.

I was lucky, I came from a RPG back ground and had some friends that were in their 30s to 50s by the time I started in late vanilla. So I only endured white gear for a few levels before I got some good ole run throughs of RFC, SFK, and WC. I was pretty lucky in that sense. I was a warlock with mining and engineering when I started, which in Vanilla...not as awesome as it might sound. I soon switched to Tailoring and Alchemy.

Axes were added to rogues in Wrath, so it was around for one expansion before weapon skills were removed. I'm pretty sure unarmed was baseline for everyone though.

Ya unarmed was baseline for everyone and weapon skills based on your race and class. We also had the weapon skill even if they were a caster. I originally start as a human rogue, I remember we had a dagger and could only sinister strike for awhile. very limited memory of ambush working with a sword until patched.

There were some BC achieves to lvl 4 weapon skills to 400 and another to get unarmed to 400. I do remember when they made weapon skills based on the mob lvl so you couldn't just level on boars or bears. Always had to keep it interesting.

today you get thrown at with blue items. you could say blue is the new green now. and purple is the new blue.

Heroic 2/2 gear would be considered epics. I remember helping people out in mc in full T2-2.5 and basically tanking because my aggro was so damn high with even auto attacks. I'm trying to think of that scenario here. I would love to see what a full heroic geared melee dps could pull off in a group of people in mainly blues. They have probably tweaked threat for tanks in a positive way to help them better accommodate that scenario. I'd hope they have at least.

This is making me start to miss dungeon sets... or even the epic dungeon sets added later in vanilla.

Leveling during Vanilla was mostly about rushing to the min level required to run the next dungeon. If you were on a decent server, you could find groups in 15-20 minutes and spend another 20-30 minutes for everyone to get to the dungeon. Most dungeons sub 50 were not too bad or too long if you knew your way around. They also dropped a few blues. After 50, the focused changed to leveling since you had to scrape up the money for the mount, farming rep and gearing up the best you could through the higher level (longer) dungeons. So, the white gear was only used for the first 7 levels or so. Rest was green with blues mostly.